New Year, New Traditions


BY YUXI LIU

Blog Editor
Monday, February 25, 2013

Every late January or early February, there is a magical day on which us Asians party hard. Lunar New Year is a tradition associated with dancing dragons, firecrackers, and the ever-so-coveted hong bao (or money-filled red envelopes adults bestow onto their children as symbols of good fortune). At least this is the case in China. In America, however, most families seem to celebrate small-scale by attending potluck dinners with all of their Chinese friends. But even without the vibrant sound and light shows in the motherland, the spirit of the holiday is celebrated properly. There’s always dumpling making and dumpling eating, various tables of Chinese chess and Mahjong. There is always CCTV on in the family room, streaming the New Year’s Gala. There is always karaoke. There is always at least one parent attempting to sing a song too hip for someone his age. At last year’s potluck, that parent was my father.

As a college freshman, I’ve only been away from home for six-or-so months, but only if you don’t count all the breaks during which I sojourned back to my rusty Midwestern hometown. The funny thing (and the thing I’d never admit to my parents) is, I rarely miss being home. Here at Yale, I am constantly surrounded by peers and professors: either my intellectual equals or the people I hope to one day consider my intellectual equals. However, this past Lunar New Year left me with a homesickness I haven’t quite recovered from.

It first started when CASA hosted a Lunar New Year Celebration at the Ezra Stiles dining hall. Promising free Chinese food and nightlong karaoke, the event was sure to be a success, but I had no idea that a massive line would start forming for the food and festivities almost 20 minutes before it started. Within minutes, all the food was gone. I had multiple problem sets due the next day, so I couldn’t stay for the unlimited amounts of karaoke.

Even if I had stayed, I knew the food I would have gotten wouldn’t have been any comparison to the food I was used to eating on Lunar New Year. At college, there are too many meals of bubble tea, fried rice, and drunken noodles that eating those same staples on a holiday wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Greater than my nostalgia for good home cooking, however, was my nostalgia for my father’s golden singing voice (even while belting out a Mandarin version of JBieb’s “Baby”), my mother’s tendency to reveal stories about her teenage years after a few drinks.

This year, there were no Mahjong blocks clinking together as four pairs of hands tried to mix them, no loud families gathered around the TV, no clinking wineglasses (orange juice for the kids, of course), no dumplings folded into perfect little moons. This year, there was the sound of The Lumineers’ despondent echo ringing through my headphones as I finished up another matrix elimination. This year, there was the idle chatter of suitemates who didn’t know Lunar New Year was that weekend, or worse, even a holiday. This year, there was a picture my parents had texted me of the two of them, smiling and toasting over a table full of Chinese delicacies they slaved over the entire day. This year, there was that picture and not much else.

In the next three years at Yale, I guess I’ll have to find a way to adapt. Perhaps next year, I’ll rent out a residential college kitchen, make a trip to Hong Kong Market, and roll up my sleeves to roll out some dumpling dough. If this actually happens, dear readers, you’re all invited.


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